Light Start: GTA is back, TikTok TV on track, Facebook turns black and Google’s guitar tuner? Wack

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The GTA Remastered rumours were true

A month or two ago, rumours surfaced detailing a potential remaster of the first three open-world Grand Theft Auto (GTA) games from the early 2000s, GTA III, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. Turns out those rumours were spot on. Rockstar Games confirmed that the three influential games will be getting the remaster treatment and released together as Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. The new collection will be available on almost every platform, including Android and iOS, although we still don’t know exactly when just yet. Or how much it’ll cost.

While this might be great news for GTA fans, the announcement has proven rather polarising. While some folks — especially those who have been looking for a reliable way to replay the games that shaped many of the open-world games we play today — welcome the blast from the past, many still live in hope that we’ll see a GTA 6 announcement, or a trailer, or a still or anything really. But it ain’t all bad, if this remaster does well, a Red Dead Redemption remaster might not be too far off. One can only hope.

Source: The Verge[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

TikTok is coming to LG’s recent smart TVs

There’s no denying that TikTok has permeated almost every aspect of our culture. You can’t spend more than 10 minutes on any given platform online without reading, seeing or hearing mention of the app. And now there’s yet another platform for you to mindlessly consume your TikToks. If you own a 2020 or 2021 LG TV running webOS 5.0 or 6.0 you should receive a firmware update as they started rolling out on 7 October.

That is if you live in Europe. The app is first rolling out to Germany, France and the UK, according to The Verge. That doesn’t help us here in SA much, but maybe that’s a good thing if you’re wanting to avoid the short-form video-sharing app for as long as you can. That window is shrinking very quickly though. Back in August, it became the most downloaded non-Facebook app in the world. TikTok content is formatted for mobile phone viewing with their vertical aspect ratios so it’s probably not going to look very good anyway. But hey, why exclude that potential audience for those reasons.

Source: The Verge[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Another Facebook outage raises already raised eyebrows even higher

If you own a device that connects to the internet, you’ll be aware that Facebook and all its connected services and apps faced an extended outage last week Monday, 4 October. This was the same week that Frances Haugen testified before the Senate Committee on Instagram’s negative impact on teenagers. Not a good week for the company. Well, the week had only started and on Friday, 8 October it got worse with another outage for Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, among others. 

But don’t worry because Facebook says it’s fixed the issues, for real this time. The initial outage was caused by a faulty update to the routers that handle traffic between their data centres. The outage on Friday wasn’t as bad as Monday’s with it only lasting two hours. Furthermore, Facebook says it wasn’t related to Monday’s outage but it also said there shouldn’t be any more problems. After Monday’s outage, Telegram and Signal saw a spike in downloads as people jumped from WhatsApp to a less controversial, more reliable messaging app. 

Source: The Guardian[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Google brings you a convenient way to tune your guitar

If you’ve ever searched for something like ‘flip a coin’ or ‘roll a die’ you’ll be familiar with the apps Google has built into its search platform. That catalogue has grown by one. You can now search for ‘google tuner’ for another way to tuner your guitar. This should work on any device with a microphone and that can run a browser using Google as its search engine. You might have to give your browser of choice permission to access your microphone.

Previously, you could ask your Google assistant to tune your instrument but that would mean you’d need a device that can run said assistant. This new way is slightly less limiting. This kind of tuner isn’t going to replace a tuner you plugin or clip on to your guitar, but it might prove useful in a pinch. Your results will vary depending on the device you’re using and its microphone. While you’ve got your browser open and on the tuner, you could also search for ‘metronome’ to help you keep time while playing with your newly tuned instrument.

Source: Engadget[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]